Deutsche Beteiligungs AG: Cleanpart Group sells healthcare business

• Sales of Healthcare division tripled in space of two years• Focus on semiconductor industry business• Objective: Expansion of market position in the US

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 3 November 2017. Cleanpart Group GmbH, a company in the Deutschen Beteiligungs AG (DBAG) portfolio, will in future focus on providing services for the semiconductor industry and is therefore selling its healthcare business. The buyer is VAMED, a hospital services provider, majority owned by Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA. In April 2015, DBAG invested in Cleanpart alongside DBAG Fund VI for which it provides consultation; the fund had acquired the company as part of the company’s successor solution. The partial sale has been completed with an attractive valuation; it reflects the company’s development, the good course of business in the last two years and the positive outlook for the coming years. The valuation is above that of the investment value in the last interim report published by DBAG. The rise in value has already been taken into consideration in the current DBAG forecast for the 2016/2017 financial year (30 September, preliminary figures will be published on 23 November 2017).

Cleanpart Group (www.cleanpart.com) generated over 20 percent of its revenues with its healthcare business. The company prepared reusable medical products for hospitals as an external service provider. Services included manual and mechanical instrument cleaning and sterilisation as well as repair and maintenance. Cleanpart also provided hospital operators with planning and construction consultation as well as advice for the operation of central sterilisation. The healthcare business has shown very positive development over the last two years: revenues have trebled, internally, thanks to measures to broaden the service portfolio, and externally, thanks to the acquisition of a competitor. Investments were also made in a new site to expand capacity.

“The market environment in our core business – the semiconductor industry – is excellent and offers great growth opportunities with existing and new customers,” explains Dr Udo Nothelfer, Chairman of the Cleanpart Management Board. “We want to make the most of these opportunities by focussing on our core business.” This is due to the sustained high level of investment in the development of new semiconductor manufacturing facilities and the good capacity utilisation levels of existing production facilities. Cleanpart maintains process-critical components in machines that are primarily used in the production of logic chips, memory chips, etc. Since these components become contaminated and wear out, they must be regularly decontaminated, cleaned and coated to ensure that they meet the extreme purity and performance requirements in the production processes of chip manufacturers. This also extends the components’ useful lives.

Torsten Grede, Spokesman of the DBAG Board of Management, commented on the partial sale: “Cleanpart has a solid foundation and a leading market position in Europe – we will now assist the company’s management in expanding its market position in the US with a strategy based on high technological differentiation.”